1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to web navigation and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for determining the relevancy of hyperlinks.
2. Description of the Related Art
Often when navigating through web pages or viewing other types of documents, a user is presented with hyperlinks. Hyperlinks are references to data that the user can follow. A hyperlink may point to a new document (i.e., an external document) or to a specific element within (internal to) a document. For example, in some cases, when the user sees a word or phrase in a page currently being viewed for which they would like more information, the word or phrase may be copied and pasted from the current page into a search engine as a search request, using a browser. In response to the search request, the user is presented with a plurality of possibly relevant hyperlinks that are external to the document being viewed. The user can then select one of the hyperlinks in order to obtain more information about that selected word or phrase, and even continue this process and follow one or more of the found hyperlinks to additional documents with additional hyperlinks.
An additional way a user can arrive at external links, would be if the user right clicked on a word presented in a document and a drop down menu appeared in which the user could select “look up” or a similar search request function, which is a search technique similar to the above noted browser initiated search request. In other cases, for example, when the user is viewing a Portable Document Format (PDF) document, selection of a link embedded in the document being viewed may open an external web page or open a file, while selection of an internal link may open a different page within a current document, and the like. Often, in response to such page to page navigation, a user is provided along the way with a significant number of hyperlinks. Some of those hyperlinks may lead to presentation of information relevant to the user and some of those hyperlinks may not lead to presentation of relevant information.
When the user selects a presented hyperlink in expectation of it leading to relevant information, the next page presented to the user may indeed provide the user with further relevant information, or may not, and may possibly provide one or more additional hyperlinks. Thus, the new page may bring the user closer to the information he or she is seeking, or the new page may have no information relevant to the user's needs, in which case, the user may then return to a previous page or continue navigating via further hyperlinks in an effort to continue to seek relevant information. This “hit or miss” search for relevant information results in wasted time and a poor user experience.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and apparatus for determining the relevancy of hyperlinks.